It is dipping well below freezing at night in Quincy right now, but this is the coldest part of the year. Central Washington isn't exactly cool in the summer months - the average highs for Quincy in July are in the mid-80s, and the record highs are pushing 110F.

Lets look at that quote again shall we?

(emphasis mine)

If you can't wrap your head around the fact that any person who has already set foot in your store is a potential sale, you'd make a terrible salesperson. Checking prices is not a guarantee that the customer is going to shop somewhere else. If your prices are even in the same ballpark, there is a decent chance they'll pick up the item *now* because they are already there, and it is convenient. If the staff was pleasant, that is another point in their favor.

The entire issue here is that some sales geek at Toys'r'us made an *assumption* that someone checking prices on their phone will definitely not make any purchases while they are in the store. By making that assumption, they probably swayed that customer away from making any purchases, and in fact, they have now generated negative word of mouth. Harassing shoppers is a pretty terrible way to move product. I work for one of those "big" B&M stores, and if I saw a sales associate harassing a customer for checking prices on their phone, they'd be in the office for a quick refresher on the benefits of friendliness.

Frankly, taking your money to another business, be it online or another retailer, is never unethical. No one has any obligation to keep a store in business just because they happened to walk in and take up their floorspace for a few minutes. The store is responsible for their own survival, and part of that is balancing operating costs against actual sales. Plenty of retailers are surviving just fine in the face of online (and mail-order before that) competition so far, the ability to check prices real-time instead of ahead of time is *not* going to push a currently profitable retailer over the edge now. Smart retailers are looking for ways to utilize their customer's smart phones, instead of waving their hands in panic that now they can get real-time pricing data.

Even if you grant that it is unethical to shop in a retail store and buy online - and that is a big stretch - any retailer who harasses their customers for shopping intelligently deserves to go out of business. Period.

Look, people shop around, they did before the internet, and they did before mobile phones. There is nothing any retailer can do to stop this.

Being grumpy at a customer for using the tools at their disposal to shop around more efficiently is simply driving that customer away. Treating your customer with respect, on the other hand, *might* make you a sale even if your prices aren't the absolute lowest.

A sales person calling over a supervisor to bother a guest in their store for price shopping is extremely disrespectful. You call over a manager for suspicious activities, or clear violations of posted store polices (non-service pets, inappropriate clothing) NOT because you are worried the customer might find out you don't have the lowest price and go shop elsewhere. They might have passed on a product at your store due to price, but now they almost certainly will because you harassed them. How is that a win for your store?

Really, the light was missing and I didn't notice?

It was a light truck, not a passenger car.

The point, of course, is that I never had to retrofit a center brake light.

Even if this passes, there is no way it will prevent all accidents while reversing.

How many of those 292 deaths are caused by inadequate safety features, and how many are caused by pure carelessness? If you're reversing fast enough to KILL SOMEONE you probably need to slow down and pay attention.

Must have been a state law, I was driving an 87' pickup with no center brake light until just a few years ago. This was in WA.

It is right there in the summary... they're selling at a loss now, but they're betting on component prices coming down. Presumably as a result of volume ramping up and the tech maturing.

Just to be clear, I'm not really complaining about "synergy" here. Synergy is indeed the correct concept in this case, regardless of its overuse in the business world. I'm complaining about the awkward inversion of "creates synergy," which is a pretty classic example of a feel good corporate buzz-phrase. You wouldn't say that automating manufacturing processes "creates un-jobs" - but he chose to say "creates dis-synergy," rather than something more concise and accurate like "destroys synergy."

He was not suggesting subterranean dwellings in those locations. He was pointing out that there is still a lot of sparsely populated surface to live on before resorting to subterranean colonization.

Dis-synergy? Wow, corporate buzzwords are bad enough without mangling them into new usage.

I'm sorry, but your definition of planets has gaping hole. Unless you believe that gas giants shouldn't be classified as planets?

I don't know, I recall covering some European history when I was in (American) high school. Primarily French and English history and how it relates to the formation of modern politics in the US.

Zero coverage of Korean history though, that much is true.

Do they use the roads? Do they have children who go to school?

It is very difficult to completely avoid benefiting from government services, and you really would have to make a conscious effort to do so.

Ordinary people can identify what is commercial traffic and what is military traffic with a book of silhouettes and a pair of binoculars.